Open Thread

Democrats, MSMers and RINOs are all in Campaign Mode. You know – “it is OVER! The GOP has Lost! There is nothing that can stop the Democrat juggernaut in November! Trump has failed!” And they trot out the same polls which got 2024 wrong as proof of it all…spliced together with articles like “you know, I was like totally talking to this construction guy in south Texas and everyone is going to vote Democrat because Trump is deporting the illegals who worked the jobs”. Oh, and guys, the events in Minnesota are seared into the public mind and they all hate Trump for it.

Hey, we’ll see how it comes out – if the American people want the illegals to stay, the boys to keep playing in girls sports and carbon taxes on being normal, then that is what they’ll get. But I have my doubts about that – especially as Team Trump/GOP is already starting to use their vast campaign funds to advertise. Those videos we had of Leftist rioters waving Mexican flags? Yeah, that’s gonna start showing up on the TV…it’ll probably show up a lot for the World Series. Democrats are still for “they/them” and the GOP is for you.

Here’s what it is: the Democrats are playing the Wizard of Oz like hours after the curtain has been pulled back. We know it is all fake. But they keep pushing the buttons and working the controls as if we aren’t right there, watching them lie while pointing and laughing at them. Twenty years ago, the scenes in Minnesota would really have been seared…because there was no force to question the MSM Narrative and no GOPer with the guts to stand up against the Narrative. Now we have X and Trump…it just doesn’t work any longer.

Zeek Akram appears to be a black guy who doesn’t have a problem with MAGA. Personally, I only just recently encountered his account for the first time but he’s been there for six years. Anyways, whoever he is, exactly, he captured the truth perfectly with this:

The old charge of racism just doesn’t work on us. FFS, my granddaughter is mixed race. I don’t know anyone among my friends who doesn’t have at least some mixture added to the cracker. Who do I want my granddaughter to eventually marry? Of course a steely-eyed missile man of supreme courage and good looks with buckets of money…but the reality is that as long as the guy is sober, hard working and kind…we’re cool. Beyond that it doesn’t really matter.

The crucial thing the Groypers don’t get is that you don’t have to be white to be civilized. You just have to be civilized. Thomas Sowell is exceptionally civilized. More so, indeed, than some Groyper moron out there thinking the Jews had it coming in 1933. But the Left also doesn’t get it on the other side…to be civilized you have to be civilized. You can’t be eating rice with your fingers or taking a dump on the street…nor can you engage in “honor killing” of your wayward daughter, nor clog a street with prayer in the middle of the day. It doesn’t matter what skin color the barbarians have…if they are barbarians, they have to be kept out. As I’ve said before, I’ll trade an uncivilized American white person for a civilized Nigerian Catholic farmer any day of the week. I like the Mexicans who live behind my house much better than the drunken white people who used to live there.

I think we are on the cusp of really resolving the race issue in the United States. Sure, for the next few election cycles the Democrats will race-bait in the most cruel ways imaginable. But I don’t think it will work – that, in fact, we’ll start to see a larger and more durable shift of non-white voters to the GOP. In the end, the battle is between the Useful and the Useless. A “studies” professor is as useless as a welfare bum…and they vote the same way. But what does the black working man have in common with the black welfare bum? Nothing. He’s far more like the white working man. The Latino working man. The Asian working man. The key is “working man”. The men and women who actually get things done in the USA are all of one class…color blind and gender neutral. They just want to be able to work in peace, keep what they earn and raise their families in safe neighborhoods. Some of them are poor…some of them are billionaires. But they all want the same basic things…and I think they are about to win, over the next two or three cycles, complete power in the USA.

26 thoughts on “Open Thread

  1. jdge's avatar jdge February 15, 2026 / 9:25 pm

    It seems the racist claims are becoming redundant when minority voices become stronger, especially when such voices have massive followers.

  2. Retired Spook's avatar Retired Spook February 16, 2026 / 10:35 am

    Democrats, MSMers and RINOs are all in Campaign Mode. You know – “it is OVER! The GOP has Lost! There is nothing that can stop the Democrat juggernaut in November! Trump has failed!”

    I just can’t believe there are anywhere near a majority of voters who want to go back to the Biden years when real wages shrank by 1.5 % compared to an 8.4% INCREASE during Trump’s first term, and a nearly 2% increase so far in his second term. Did all those millions of people who were having buyer’s remorse early in Biden’s term suddenly develop amnesia? Did everyone suddenly decide, “I want less, and I want it now!” It’s not dissimilar to the Misery Index that defined Jimmy Carter’s presidency, and we all know what happened to his re-election bid.

    • Mark Noonan's avatar Mark Noonan February 16, 2026 / 4:02 pm

      This is a genuine must-read, but here are some of the big points:

      Over the past decade, progressive advocacy networks have steadily accumulated influence over Democratic politics, particularly at the state and local level. In many cities and states, elected officials are no longer setting their own course on policy. Instead, a relatively small but highly organized ecosystem of national advocacy groups, politicized unions, and ideological nonprofits exerts outsized influence over the party’s candidate selection, legislative and policy drafting, and internal discipline.

      Progressive groups exercise growing leverage over primary elections and supply ready-made legislation drawn from think tanks and, increasingly, directly from the Democratic Socialists of America platform. Over time, this dynamic has produced a steady leftward shift in major Democratic strongholds. The policies that follow are often ambitious and coherent in ideological terms, but insufficiently grounded in political and economic reality. The visible consequences of these local governing decisions—including rising crime and homelessness, fiscal strain and governance mismanagement—now shape how many voters perceive the Democratic Party as a whole. The party’s current national brand problem does not arise from their actions in Washington, but from the bad outcomes in cities and states where Democrats hold power.

      Essentially, the far Left holds the purse strings – if you want to be elected dog catcher as a Democrat, then you need to go to these groups for money…and they only pass out the cash to those who will toe the Leftist line. The start of the article is about a long-time Democrat State legislator – a black woman who was as Progressive as you can want to be. But her plurality-black district didn’t (and doesn’t) want to trans kids…they want good schools, safe streets and solid job growth. But this particular woman just couldn’t bring herself to vote for trans ideology. Her vote, either way, was meaningless as the GOP-controlled legislature was going to pass the bill…but her conscience and knowledge would not let her vote against it. Whammo: next election a hand-selected Leftist candidate challenged her in the primary and she was out…and then left the party after her defeat. The Democrats got their Simon-pure candidate…but increased their overall unelectability at the State level in Texas. And this is translating to the national level…Harris, to get into office in California, had to stake out positions which while fine for far Left California, were political poison on the national stage…and she couldn’t back away from them in 2024. Had she done so – had she tried a bit of Clintonite triangulation on the contentious issues – the far Left would have bolted and Trump would have won in a 60/40 landslide. But, of course, holding to them ensured she lost all the same.

      We watched all last year as the far Left simply doubled down. The American people had just given the majority of their votes to Trump and the GOP on a program of border security, deportations, no girls in boys sports, protectionist economics and robust America First foreign policy…normally, the party that loses seeks to steal the other side’s clothes a bit so they can get back in. Democrats just went further Left…to the point where they are now seriously calling for the jailing of ICE agents for simply enforcing long standing immigration laws. They want us to subordinate ourselves to the EU on foreign policy. They want to open our economy to the ChiComs. And they are still for “they/them”…as if everyone can’t see the obvious: males have a physical strength advantage over females and so, say, having a male box a woman is probably a bad idea.

      This is why I think that 2026 will come out very different from Conventional Wisdom…which, by the way, is as much a psyop as ever. In 2024 they were telling us that Kamala’s Brat quotient was going to blow Trump out of the water and they had a host of polls and news stories saying it was so. Heck, as late as 6 pm Eastern on election day they were still telling us that Harris had it…they clung to the pysop right to the end…even when Harris chickened out on conceding the election after Pennsylvania was called for Trump (about two hours after it should have been called). They are hoping that some how, some way their revived pysop will somehow trick the voters into awarding the House to the Democrats. And, hey, maybe it’ll work…but I do not think it will.

      • Retired Spook's avatar Retired Spook February 16, 2026 / 5:37 pm

        The party’s current national brand problem does not arise from their actions in Washington, but from the bad outcomes in cities and states where Democrats hold power.

        That’s not a recent phenomenon. Many, if not most major cities haven’t had a Republican mayor in decades, and they have gotten progressively (no pun intended) worse. But apparently voters in those cities like high crime and filth, although you’d think at some point they’d get fed up.

      • Mark Noonan's avatar Mark Noonan February 16, 2026 / 8:54 pm

        IMO it is fraud. I still say the GOP should send in some covert observers. Maybe pick ten polling locations in Chicago and send someone down to merely count the number of people who go in from poll open to close…and then compare that with the reported same-day vote out of that location. My bet is that the variance will be staggering.

        You take a look at things like the 1970 Mexican elections – this was when the PRI was totally dominant (had been since the 1920s) and they scored 86% of the Presidential vote, 178 out of 213 House seats and all the Senate seats. It was just ridiculous. There is no way a fair election comes out that way…and there is no way to know how the people of Mexico actually voted, or how many of them bothered as the conclusion was written in stone before the start of the campaign. Oaxaca, one of the poorest regions of Mexico, gave the PRI 96% of the vote…even though they were desperately poor before and remained after. The first time there was anything like a free election in Mexico (2000), Oaxaca gave PRI 44% of the vote.

        Vote rigging is probably as old as the first time a vote couldn’t have all the voters in one place. As soon as something had to be tossed into a ballot box which wasn’t 100% under the eyes of the people, boxes got stuffed. And people do figure things out – and one of the things they’ll figure out fast is that it is all rigged. Think about that lady in the article…she had represented her district for a good while, was well-known and liked in it…outside groups came in, poured in money and she was out. Really? Like the people there had no choice? They couldn’t stick with the person who best reflected their views? Unlikely…more likely is that she had “won” all the time based upon the system being rigged to ensure the (D) got it and as long as she had the (D) blessing she was impervious…once she lost that blessing, she never had a chance…didn’t matter what the voters wanted, the Money wanted something else, and so Something Else got it…probably in spite of what the voters may have wanted…but who might not have bothered to show up for her because they never really bothered before…the vote totals were pre-scripted.

      • Amazona's avatar Amazona February 17, 2026 / 12:44 pm

        “My bet is that the variance will be staggering.”

        Well, of course it would be, given that math is racist.

        Just look at information that has been steadfastly ignored by the Left base, like thousands more “votes” counted than ballots sent out.

        I’m glad that Nick Shirley has gotten some media coverage. He is now talking about the same stuff that the quantum computer guys like Omega4America have been posting on Substack, but he now has a bigger national audience than they have managed to get.

        “Our teams were using a “known address database” gathered from the internet – lists of every Marriott, Days Inn, Hilton. The database picked up addresses of RV Parks and marinas – and was a good start.

        In Fractal, as we come to know a domain – voter lists are a domain – we find new ways to reconcile the data. Known addresses did not show us the physical building – so we ingested the property tax records for the major metro areas.

        A voter roll may tell us 11 people vote from a particular address – the property tax roll tells us that address is an empty lot. The instantaneous Google map shows there is a trash pile in the middle of it. The building permit database tells us there is a convenience store being built there in 2 months.

        One click – across ten million records – shows a clear ballot scam.

        Now, at quantum speed, Fractal can determine Phineas – who claims to live at that location – should not get a mail-in ballot.

        The national voter integrity orgs – for 20 years – after raising tens of millions of dollars for their media events – never cross-checked voter rolls against property rolls real-time – since either can change month to month.

        Today we do it in about 20 states, maybe more.

        The national voter integrity orgs focus on that which cannot be fixed yet can be funded indefinitely – and has no feedback loop.

        In 2026, the Repubs are re-hiring the grifters to do door-to-door canvassing (getting paid for a useless phone app they have with 52% incorrect lists). The Repubs for sure will pay big to register low propensity voters who will mostly not vote – but will appear on those canvassing phone apps sucking up the time and calls from those as well.

        What the Repubs are about to learn in a very big way – the Republican feedback loop – we know already because we are now seeing some of the 2024 data cross searched against who actually voted – Repubs are about to learn that without Trump on the ticket to hide the ineffectiveness of their ground game – they are going to get smoked big time – losing House seats they never expected to lose and losing all the ones they did expect.

      • Amazona's avatar Amazona February 17, 2026 / 12:53 pm

        If we need proof of the inherent corruption value of mail-in voting, see what happens in 2028 if Trump is successful in getting a national standard for presidential elections that bans mailed ballots.

        Force in-person voting with photo IDs for the presidential race and naturally people will just cast their state votes at the same time, in person. So even if a state clings to its mail-in voting scheme for everything other than the national election (which would be insane, but then look at the base…) there will be a clear record of what we get when voters are screened for citizenship and identity vs the loosey-goosey chaos of mailed ballots.

        I’d like to see a national holiday for Election Day, requiring same-day voting, same-day counting, and in-person voting with Real ID. With groups like Omega4America and citizen journalists like Nick Shirley inspiring young people to get involved by proving they can make a difference, elections might actually start to mean something.

      • Mark Noonan's avatar Mark Noonan February 17, 2026 / 1:35 pm

        But I will disagree on us getting smoked – because Trump is going to be on the ballot in 2026. He’s explicitly going to put himself there…so, this time around, like 2024, registering low-propensity voters is a good idea. I do expect the turnout to be high – and polling will be more useless than ever as lots of both Dem and GOP voters simply won’t be contacted…and this before the inherent anti-GOP bias in polling comes in.

      • Amazona's avatar Amazona February 17, 2026 / 4:25 pm

        I don’t think it’s a binary choice–register a lot of low-propensity voters OR pursue registration clean-up and hopefully get rid of mail in voting. They complement each other.

        One thing I would do is start talking about having high-powered legal teams in place to sue officials who refuse to purge registration rolls, accept blatantly bogus votes, etc. Create and maintain a big cloud of threat hovering over the election, making it clear that no shenanigans will go unaddressed.

    • Amazona's avatar Amazona February 17, 2026 / 12:28 pm

      None of the above. There is only one factor in play, and that is the success of demonizing Trump. It’s all Trump, all the time. Social media are swamped with increasingly ugly and ominous-looking graphics of Trump surrounded by banners of alleged disasters, and his efforts to enforce laws result in blatant lies like the last one claiming that “ICE murdered a woman” when in fact she was killed by an illegal criminal alien fleeing from ICE.

      None of the things you mentioned play any significant role in the hive-like swarming of Dembots. They are what they are and they are totally programmed. Social media still has posts popping up that allege great financial harm from the tariffs—“I had to pay 15% more for my crappy Chinese pliers at Harbor Freight!”—-and bleating about inflation (ignoring or at least ignorant of inflation getting under control) and so on. Really, all they have now is ICE. There is still some squeaking, down from the full-throated squealing, about Epstein, but that’s increasingly dangerous territory and I think the bigger voices are being waved off from that topic.

      It is time for the better speech makers on our side to start delivering concise, pithy explanations at every opportunity. For example, I’ll bet that 95% of the DMB (Drooling Mouth Breathers) of the Leftist base don’t have the slightest idea of what a “tariff” is, other than being an example of Nazi Gestapo King stuff. So just a few sentences: “When a company takes its manufacturing to another country because of crippling regulations here, it takes jobs with it. Removing a lot of those unnecessary regulations makes it easier to do business here, and when that company has to pay a tariff to bring its products to the United States is is more likely to just bring the company, and those jobs, back here instead.”

      When you are dealing with an ignorant, uneducated but thoroughly indoctrinated public, you have to carefully break down the complicated stuff into easier to understand bits and then explain them. We now have enough material to work with, to start doing this. “Fraud” has to stop being this vague, nonspecific word floating around out there. It has to be tethered to real-world reality, as in “When the United States can claw back a trillion dollars now being funneled to a few elites and criminals and use it to help run the country instead of making them rich, we can reduce our taxes”. These people are so Trump-focused they don’t even know there ARE dots, much less how to connect them.

  3. Cluster's avatar Cluster February 16, 2026 / 10:41 am

    MAGA agenda: Lower taxes, Lower prescription drug prices, Lower inflation, No tax on tips, No tax on SS, $1,000 bank account for American newborns, Trillions of dollars of new industrial investments creating good paying jobs, secured border, lower inner city crime, cease fire in Gaza, no nuclear Iran, drug cartels on the run, and no Democrat men in girls sports competitions ….

    Democrat agenda: Fight Nazi’s

    ANYONE who votes Democrat is simply a unAmerican, weaponized moron …. BillBonk comes to mind.

  4. jdge's avatar jdge February 17, 2026 / 3:06 pm

    I imagine most of us have seen Harris face-plant when questioned about Taiwan. I’m guessing that’s because the left hasn’t had any reason to formulate any talking points related to it. The staggering blunder made it quite clear that unless the leftist politicians are spoon fed what to say, their brains are too immature to have any coherent logical thought.

    • Amazona's avatar Amazona February 17, 2026 / 4:28 pm

      The only Dem who has tried to articulate policies was Mamdani and he needed the hive mind of New York to get away with it. Everything else is pure Identity Politics

      • jdge's avatar jdge February 17, 2026 / 9:06 pm

        Not sure if Mamdani is articulate in anything except in the art of lying. I’m curious just how long the people in NYC will put up with the deceit and its associated destruction.

      • Amazona's avatar Amazona February 17, 2026 / 9:32 pm

        Indefinitely as long as it’s not Trump. That is the level of intellect and political acuity of New Yorkers.

    • Amazona's avatar Amazona February 18, 2026 / 9:34 am

      You must be exhausted after all your victory laps, celebrating your big find! (Which, BTW, is old news.) Are you having trouble understanding it? Well, you see, this guy did go to the trouble to become a legal resident—unlike those who never bothered. And he evidently thought that legal residency also meant he could vote. He was probably offered the ability to sign up for voter registration when he got a drivers’ license, as millions are every year thanks to Motor Voter. And he thought that being here legally, and being registered to vote, meant he could legally vote. He was wrong. And just like people who miss the sign telling them the speed limit has changed and get a ticket, he is being charged for his misunderstanding.

      But how precious of you to coyly duck your chins and smirk that this single man, who simply made a mistake, represents all voter fraud. And how typical of the NYT to try to make a big deal out of it. But this very nice man, highly respected in his community, who made the effort to be a legal resident, does not represent anything other than that. He does not represent the illegal alien issue, because he is proof that anyone here can go through the process to become legal. He does not represent “voter fraud” because, while he was not eligible to vote, there is ample evidence that he believed he was registered to vote and that registration meant he could vote. There is not a hint of a desire to commit fraud.

      THIS is what you find “interesting”?

      The only point of interest is why you feel compelled to share your toxic bias and “ideas” with us. For more than two decades you have been subjected to scorn and derision here, as your bizarre thought processes have been addressed as such. What is it about you that drives you back to a place where you have been consistently humbled? True, the New York Times, the bible of the Lemming Left, tried to make a big deal out of it so I guess it is no surprise to see you obediently toddle after it, parroting its nonsense, but still—-this just signals desperation.

    • Amazona's avatar Amazona February 18, 2026 / 11:08 am

      Now tell us how interested you are in the more than 11,000 aliens registered to vote in Virginia. If your “interest” has not flagged (“LOOK! there’s something shiny!”) you can ponder the approximately 616 known aliens in New Jersey’s voter registration system just a few years ago. Did the NYT check to see if any of them had voted? For that matter, did they look into the dog voting in New York?

      Leave it to the Left to focus on one guy with a legitimate story for why he thought it was OK to vote and ignore the hundreds of thousands of mail ballots send to non-existent “voters” at illegitimate addresses. Numerically in every swing state there are currently over 150,000 ineligible address/voter combos set to receive a mail-in ballot.

      In Pennsylvania there are over 1,250,000. In Texas, over a million. In California over 5 million.

      If these ballots are cast (voted) – they become UNTRACEABLE with current voter integrity processes.

      The ballot is a legit mail-in ballot.

      The address is a real address (but not a real residence. It could be a Wal Mart or vacant lot, or a post office box business.)

      The voter is or was a real person

      Voter ID is useless – these voters have voter IDs or even if they don’t – voter IDs don’t count in mail-in balloting.

      But this isn’t nearly as “interesting” as gloating over one guy in one state who can at least explain why he thought he was registered to vote and therefore allowed to vote. It’s not even as “interesting” as the huge scam of Motor Voter, where clerks are instructed to offer every single person getting a driver’s license the ability to register to vote. Even when the clerk has just issued a restricted license due to expire when the foreigner’s work permit expires, and the dated work permit and and passport are in the clerk’s hand and he knows that the person is not a citizen.

      You can tell so much about a person (and a media outlet) by looking at what is considered “interesting” and what is studiously ignored.

      • Amazona's avatar Amazona February 18, 2026 / 12:06 pm

        Here is something that IS interesting. It’s not predigested by the NYT and fed to you in teeny tiny regurgitated bites, so it might be kind of intimidating, but being a super-intellectual teecher an’ all, knowin’ all that stuff ’bout the Constitution an’ all, I bet you can eventually wade through it enough to get the drift. No color pictures, but there are some videos.

      • Mark Noonan's avatar Mark Noonan February 19, 2026 / 12:21 am

        It is kinda silly to find the bizarre, one-off GOP fraud and try to use it against us when the clear facts show that the Democrats stole the 2020 Presidential election.

      • Amazona's avatar Amazona February 19, 2026 / 9:06 am

        That’s what struck me, too—that coy tittering as if to say they had sprung a real big one on us. One guy, with a reasonable back story for why he thought he could vote. But that’s what they do. There is a whole tapestry of fraud, and they zero in on one pixel and try to act like that’s the whole picture, and it’s no big deal, and it’s not “massive”, and it “wouldn’t change the outcome” and everything is “rebutted” and nothing to look at here, folks.

        We’ve recounted the same bogus ballots a dozen times, and always get the same result, so we’ve made our point! We even recounted them by hand! You want to compare them to the envelopes and check postmarks and signatures? That’s just crazy talk, you big deniers! You’re REBUTTED! Didn’t you read the NYT? Your claims are BASELESS—-it says so, right there. And what about—-what about—yeah, what about 2000?

      • Retired Spook's avatar Retired Spook February 19, 2026 / 10:26 am

        yeah, what about 2000?

        Well, for starters, there was NO recount that showed Gore winning, even ones done after the fact by partisan media.

      • Amazona's avatar Amazona February 19, 2026 / 11:39 am

        I was just remembering a couple of elections where Dems claimed we had cheated. We forget how hard they tried to rig 2000—months in advance having the Dem election commission purposely design confusing ballots, then hiring a company (I think from Texas) weeks before the election to start calling Dems who had voted (giving them a list) around noon on election day to tell them they might have “accidentally” voted for Bush because of the design of the ballot and instructing them to challenge the election. In the meantime they had the lapdog media call the election for Gore in Florida, in spite of the fact that polls in the Central Time Zone were still open, resulting in people lined up to vote just going home without voting because they thought it was too late. And even after all that, Bush won, even after the demands that ballots be constantly recounted, that people be assigned to determine what the voter “really wanted” when the ballots were not properly executed, after Dem efforts to dislodge “hanging chads” to open up punch holes to indicate votes that were never really made, and all sorts of wild shenanigans including a preview of Georgia 2020 when they tried to lock Republicans out of the room while ballots were being “counted” (again). I still remember the pearl-clutching and horror and absolute OUTRAGE when a few Republicans just pushed past the Dem thugs trying to physically block the door—THEY TOUCHED US! IT WAS ASSAULT!

        Then there were the Dem “alternate electors” they tried to use to rig the Electoral College vote in 2020.

        To this day, both of these elections are mentioned by Dems as “stolen” while they simultaneously declare proofs of rigging and cheating in 2020 as “treason”.

  5. Retired Spook's avatar Retired Spook February 18, 2026 / 10:44 am

    this just signals desperation.

    Among other things.

    • Amazona's avatar Amazona February 18, 2026 / 11:13 am

      Yeah, “other things” including but not limited to profound stupidity and blind allegiance to a tribe that places gotchas over honesty or integrity.

      • Retired Spook's avatar Retired Spook February 18, 2026 / 12:36 pm

        Those were the top two on my list.

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